• figment •

Notes: Today's Good Word often arises in the redundant phrase "a figment of (your) imagination". We don't need to specify the imagination or the mind, since figments can only exist in our minds. The adjective, should you ever need it, is figmental.

In Play: The question is whether we can figure out a situation in which today's Good Word may be used without attaching "of someone's imagination" to it: "Once some Harvard students got together and created a figment of a student applying for admission—and the figmental applicant was admitted!" Other ways abound: "Bernie Madoff's investment firm was a financial figment that caught many investors unawares.

Word History: Today's Good Word comes from Latin figmentum "formation, fiction" from fingere "to form, to feign". This root came to Latin from PIE dheigh- "to form, build". It came to English as dough and dairy. Dairy? The original word in Old English was dey "female servant", the person in charge of the bread, the dough-girl. As time passed and the duties of the dough-girl expanded to those of a dairy maid, the place where the dairy-maid worked was called the dey-ery, today spelled dairy. For families that could not afford a maid, things were tougher. The bread-kneader was the lady of the house, who was called the hlæfdige "bread-kneader". This compound noun comprised hlæf "bread" (today's loaf) + diga "kneader, shaper" which, a 1000 years later, is today's lady. (Albert Skiles is no figment of my imagination, but the contributor who suggested today's very Good Word.)

A fragment of your imagination,Philip, or perhaps that undigested peanut butter and jelly sandwich you referred to in the Drone thread:

"You don't believe in me," observed the Ghost.

"I don't." said Scrooge.

"What evidence would you have of my reality, beyond that of your senses?"

"I don't know," said Scrooge.

"Why do you doubt your senses?"

"Because," said Scrooge, "a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!"

Philip, here's an interesting association: although it's from a different language family and culture, loaf guardian isn't far off from the Biblical associations of "breaking bread". The master of the house blessed the bread and then handed it to a slave to break and distribute. In a poorer household, which might not sport a handy retinue of slaves, "any woman could do it"... (Part of clergy training from a scholar cleric who always challenged students to recognize and grow past their own cultural and personal mindsets. He said conflating the two opposite roles made an impression at the time which has been lost through the intervening ages and shifting cultural mores.)